Windows.old?

[Guest]

During the installation of Vista, the Vista installer says that all my files
and settings will be moved into a folder marked Windows.old. Am I able to
restore all the files and settings from that Windows.old folder into Vista?
Or is the Windows.old file just for reference? Like, will all my files be
able to be extracted and moved into Vista?

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Think of windows.old as there for reference since there is no tool for
restoring from windows.old the way you would with a backup/restore program.
I think of it as a dust bin.

Review the files in the folder. I have no idea what all might be there
because I formatted and did a clean install for each new build of Vista.
Are there data files such that you could use them in programs like Word? Or
are there only the old system files and such?

 

[Guest]

Actually, the files that would get wiped are REALLY important, such as
pictures and other stuff.

 

[Todd]

The speculation that I have seen here on this newsgroup, is that Microsoft
must have intended to have some kind of rollback to a previous operating
system, but never got around to implementing it.

Windows.old does not seem to serve any usefull purpose.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Actually it was possible to roll back to a version of Win9x (from XP, say)
but even that had problems. If the FAT32 filesystem had been converted to
NTFS then even that kind of rollback was not possible.

It is not possible to roll back to NT based systems (such as Vista to XP).
Windows.old still gets written anyway.

 

[Todd]

That seems like a better explanation than what I saw before.

Thanks for the update.

Todd

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

No prob.

That seems like a better explanation than what I saw before.

Thanks for the update.

Todd

 

[Takali Omega]

The only problem I'm having with the windows.old folder is that I can't, for
some security reasons or other, delete the thing. Even with my account
being an administrator, I can't seem to give myself the permissions to
delete it. I went through and changed the permissions on it and still no
luck.

Anyone have any idea of how to deal with that?

Takali Omega

 

[John]

Since you installed over your current operating system....

'X:\Windows' became 'X:\Windows.old' so you people didn't loose any files,
this would have also been likely duplicated for other folders like Documents
and Settings.

You cannot just uninstall Vista, especially now so I hope you were smart
enough to backup/image your system so you can restore what you had
previously without having to reformat, and do a clean install as you likely
won't want to use Vista as your main operating system, also future updates
will require you redo your Vista install from scratch again also.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

How about in Safe Mode?

The only problem I'm having with the windows.old folder is that I can't,
for some security reasons or other, delete the thing. Even with my
account being an administrator, I can't seem to give myself the
permissions to delete it. I went through and changed the permissions on
it and still no luck.

Anyone have any idea of how to deal with that?

Takali Omega

 

[Chad Harris]

When I have left files on the target Vista partition, I find I can do
whatever I want with the ones that I want to save. There are some files
that would not delete by any of the methods below that I found would only
delete by formating them. Safe Mode was one of several methods I tried but
they were more in the line of meaningless temp files. The folders that I
wanted to save from Windoes.old I simply copied.

The situation with Windows Old and upgrading XP to Vista though doesn't seem
to be one I want to ever get into from reports I've seen here.

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_undeletable_file.htm

http://delinvfile.assistance-and-resources-for-computing-inc.qarchive.org/

Don't know if these would work in Vista.

CH

 

[Mike Williams]

The only problem I'm having with the windows.old folder is that I can't,
for some security reasons or other, delete the thing. Even with my
account being an administrator, I can't seem to give myself the
permissions to delete it. I went through and changed the permissions on
it and still no luck.

Anyone have any idea of how to deal with that?

I robocopy a blank folder over it in /MIR mode.

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

During the installation of Vista, the Vista installer says that all my

files
and settings will be moved into a folder marked Windows.old. Am I able to
restore all the files and settings from that Windows.old folder into
Vista?
Or is the Windows.old file just for reference? Like, will all my files be
able to be extracted and moved into Vista?

IMO, unless you have the nasty habit of saving your actual data files within
C:\WINDOWS, I'd say there's nothing C:\WINDOWS.OLD you should ever need.
Rolling back (if at all possible with Vista) is problematic at best, and I
wouldn't recommend it even with previous OSes that do support it...